3D Gaming Comes of Age

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After bemoaning my lack of geek cred last week, I’m gonna go all gaming geek on y’all this time around.

Back in the mid-nineties, Danny Sanchez was a product manager at Orchid. Orchid is no longer with us, but at the time it was one of the host of companies making VGA cards. Orchid cards based on the Tseng ET4000 had a great rep among PC gamers of the day, because it didn’t slow down PC games, unlike some other cards. Back then, PC games used purely software-driven graphics, but it was amazing how a graphics card with a dumb frame buffer could adversely affect performance of software-rendered 3D games, or even purely 2D titles.

At any rate, Danny dragged me into the 3dfx Immersion conference at the 1995 Computer Game Developer’s Conference. It’s hard to believe that it was only ten years ago, but 3dfx (then known as 3Dfx) hadn’t yet shipped the Voodoo 1. In theory, I shouldn’t have been there, since I was a freelance writer who mostly wrote for Computer Gaming World, and hadn’t even signed an NDA. The seminar room was packed with developers, and it was the beginning of the era of consumer 3D acceleration.

Later on during that conference, Mike Weksler, then technical editor for Computer Gaming World, dragged me into the private suite that Rendition was renting. Rendition was another early key player in the world of hardware 3D acceleration. It, too, had no hardware, but was showing off pre-rendered clips of what Papyrus’s NASCAR Racing game would look like with 3D acceleration.

As DirectX 1.0 and, later, Direct3D shipped, and as OpenGL matured on the consumer PC, 3D acceleration in games became commonplace. It was ideal for presenting virtual environments, such as first-person shooters, flight simulators, and first person RPGs.

But as 3D became more pervasive, game developers started using 3D for overhead, strategy-based games. Even as hardware-accelerated 3D became all the rage among the FPS crowd, 2D strategy games were still using 2D sprites, and fixed-perspective top-down or isometric views. RTS games like the original Age of Empires, turn-based games like Panzer General and Civiliztion all were purely software, 2D titles.

I can’t recall which strategy game was the first to actually use 3D, but the first I can recall encountering was a tactical strategy game called Incubation, which I reviewed for Computer Gaming World way back when. You managed a squad of soldiers on an alien world, fighting a war against an alien army. That didn’t seem too controversial, but when RTS games started using 3D, fans started complaining. For one thing, the level of graphics in the early 3D real time strategy games couldn’t match the hand-drawn artwork of some of the more elegantly drawn 2D, sprite-based titles. The other issue was control. Early 3D RTS designers went wild with their controls, figuring that everyone would appreciate the ability to zoom across landscapes and wildly rotate their viewports.

But the technology juggernaut marched on, and more and more 3D titles used hardware-accelerated 3D. The 3D strategy games never looked quite as good as a 2D equivalent, nor did the use of 3D particularly enhance gameplay. There were interesting attempts, to be sure, like Massive Assault, which looked great, but the 3D really didn’t do much for gameplay. Other games like the Combat Mission series used 3D in interesting ways, but their look was a little Spartan.

This year, though, there are several strategy games that use 3D well. One is Shattered Union, which bears striking similarity in gameplay to the old SSI Panzer General games. But the tactical map uses 3D well, allowing a player to view the map at infinitely adjustable zoom, allowing the player to see the map at whatever level he wants. And it looks pretty good, too.

Then there’s Age of Empires III, which doesn’t bring much innovation to its gameplay, but offers the best looking RTS these tired eyes have seen in a long time—provided you have the graphics horsepower to render it well. Then there’s Civilization 4.

Civ4, as it’s already being called, uses 3D graphics. In fact, this has generated some woes for users of ATI graphics cards. The game installs an updated version of DirectX 9.0c, which you shouldn’t skip. In fact, if you’ve got an ATI card, and you skip installing the updated DirectX 9.0c, then you may not be able to run the game.

Those woes aside, the way the game uses 3D is the way a turn-based game should use 3D. You no longer have a separate city screen: You just zoom in to see all your improvements. You can look at any city, as a matter of fact, and see the Wonders or other improvements. The units look less like little cardboard counters, and the whole effect is more atmospheric. Is the gameplay better? It’s too early to tell, but the game certainly looks better than Civilization III.

Do you think 3D used in strategy games is more effective? Drop by the forums and let us know.

This Week On ExtremeTech

We’re launching our 2005 Holiday Geek Gift Guide this week. The ExtremeTech editorial and production staff will be posting our holiday gift suggestions for the geek(s) in your life over the coming weeks, so check back often. We’ve also got the skinny on the latest VR headset from eMagin, a cordless gaming mouse and other special goodies. Plus, don’t miss the ExtremeTech podcast and the latest episode of DigitalLife TV.

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